NotQuiteHallowe'enCastle
by jane0904
Summary: Just a little fluff with added creep to tide you over the holiday. The team are playing poker, and Esposito asks a question ... Enjoy!


The poker game was winding down, but as it approached the magic of the witching hour no-one seemed inclined to go home. Javier Esposito sat back in his chair and looked around the table. "So," he said, resting his elbow on the back of the chair, "anyone ever seen a ghost?"

Five players sat in the warm glow of the light hanging overhead, the rest of the loft in shadows around them; only the flames of the fire keeping the cold of the October night at bay and a single lamp in the study otherwise lit the apartment. Esposito himself was feeling mellow from the generous measure of good whisky he'd allowed himself, plus several imported beers, while Kevin Ryan was making do with coffee, having drawn the short straw and been crowned designated driver for the pair of them. Still, he'd gone at the pizzas full tilt, and now felt like maybe he needed to undo the top button on his pants.

Captain Roy Montgomery had an amused expression on his dark face as he watched his team let their hair down a little, and he glanced at Kate Beckett, who was wondering if she could allow herself one more slice from the boxes still open on the counter, and calculating how many hours sparring she was going to have to do to work off the calories. Last, but not least, was Rick Castle, host, best-selling author, and winner of the last pot, gathering the chips from the baize, a smug smile across his lips.

"Ghosts?" Ryan collected the cards, stacking them in front of him. "It's not Hallowe'en yet."

"In about ten minutes it is." Esposito grinned, nodding towards the clock as it sliced the hours into manageable portions towards October 31st. "Come on. We all know about the kind of mayhem occurs this time of year. For most things there's a reasonable explanation, but just once in a while …"

"Dana Sullivan," Ryan completed, reminding them of the young woman who disappeared just a few feet from her boyfriend.

"Exactly." If anything, the detective's smile grew wider. "But that doesn't answer my original question. Anybody know any true ghost stories?"

"Oh, please, don't ask that question in front of my mother," Rick pleaded, holding up a hand, still sorting his winnings by colour. "Not unless you've got a few weeks free."

"Mrs R's seen a ghost?" Considering he was the one who broached the subject, Esposito looked surprised.

"Worse. She's an actress."

Kate swirled the last of her beer around her mouth and swallowed. "That means … what, exactly?"

Rick leaned forward, conspiratorially. "Theatres."

"I think I could probably have worked that out. Since I'm a police officer." She rolled her eyes.

He went on, entirely unphased, "Almost every theatre in this town has a ghost, some more famous than others."

"I've heard about a few," Captain Montgomery said. "The Belasco on West 44th, for instance."

Rick nodded encouragingly. "David Belasco, the guy who built it. He died in 1931, but that hasn't stopped him congratulating performers on their work ever since. You wouldn't believe the number of people who've sworn they heard his footsteps coming up behind them, a ghostly yet friendly hand placed on their shoulder, only when they turned, there was no-one there."

The darkness around the edges of the room seemed to crowd a little closer, listening to the story.

"Footsteps." Kate almost scoffed. "In a theatre. I think it's more likely they were just mistaken, or someone was playing tricks."

"Oh, ye of little faith." Rick shook his head, a look of deep sadness on his face as if she was missing out on something wonderful.

"It's an old building, Castle," she pointed out. "It creaks. Floorboards are on switchbacks. I'm not surprised it sounds like footsteps."

"Then how about the fact that they've heard the elevator running?"

"So?" She got up, stretching like a cat and drawing the eyes of all four men, before they realised who they were ogling and suddenly finding something else much more interesting.

"It was disconnected shortly after his death." His eyebrows raised. "Doesn't that make your blood run even a little bit cold?"

"No."

Rick shrugged, tipping the last of his whisky into his mouth. "Suit yourself."

"There's no such thing as ghosts, Castle." She walked into the kitchen area to gaze longingly at the pizza left in the boxes. "There's just gullible people who want to believe." She sniffed the pepperoni, telling herself there couldn't be many calories in that.

"I don't know." Rick leaned back in the chair, taking the opportunity, as he often did, to study her closely, the curve of her back, the way she went in and out in all the right places. "There are people who think we see ghosts every day. We don't recognise them as such, and maybe they don't know they're dead, so they just carry on going about their lives …" He paused thoughtfully a moment. "… or deaths, as the case may be, doing what they always did."

"You know, I've always wondered about that," Esposito said. "You can buy a CD or a DVD with stuff on, recorded onto a piece of plastic … why can't people be recorded onto bricks and mortar?"

"Exactly." Rick nodded gratefully. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Oh, please." Kate shook her head. "Ghosts in the walls?"

"Or in the machine. Whatever." Rick shrugged. "You're not even a little bit curious?"

"No." She gave in, picking up a slice of pepperoni delicately between her finger and thumb, dropping it into her mouth and chewing, her eyes half-closing with enjoyment.

Rick watched, licking his own lips before dragging his attention back to the matter in hand. "Then how about the New Amsterdam on 42nd?"

Ryan tapped his knuckles on the table top, getting their attention. "I know that one. Olive Thomas. One of the Ziegfield Follies' chorus girls. OD'd on her husband's syphilis medicine."

"Ryan, I'm proud of you," Rick said, grinning. "A little worried that it's the one about venereal disease you remember, but proud nevertheless."

"And it's not just theatres," Montgomery put in. "My personal favourite is the Manhattan Bistro down in Soho. Elma Sands, murdered at the back end of the 18th century and thrown down a well. There's been a lot of reports of poltergeist activity."

"I can't believe you're buying into this, sir," Kate said, shaking her head at him as she sat down again.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Beckett …"

"And thank you, Shakespeare," Rick said. "That man knew what he was talking about."

"Another writer." Kate sighed. "And not one of these can be substantiated."

Rick pointed his finger at her. "You know, you can be a real spoilsport sometimes."

"I'm a realist." She slapped his bicep. "And just because I believe in what I can see, hear or feel doesn't make me a spoilsport."

"Okay," he said, getting up from his seat and heading for the bar, rubbing his arm ostentatiously. "You want spooky from real life? Here's a little snippet I gleaned from somewhere or other. I was planning to use it in the next Nikki Heat book, but I'll let you guys hear it first."

"You can tell he's a writer, can't you?" Ryan said to Esposito. "Takes him two hundred and fifty pages to get to the point."

Rick glared at him briefly. "_If_ I can finish without being interrupted …"

"No, please. Don't mind us." Ryan looked smug.

"Thank you." He refreshed his glass with just a splash of scotch. "You know those little refrigerators they have in places like crematoria? Where they keep the bodies?"

"Crematoria?" Esposito mouthed to his partner, who shrugged.

"Plural of crematorium," Montgomery explained, having noticed the aside. "In the Latin."

"Oh. Right. Thanks."

Rick lifted his drink to the captain, who responded in kind.

"Well?" Kate asked, intrigued despite herself. "What about them?"

Rick came back to the table, lowering his voice to an almost whisper. "They can be opened from the inside."

"What?" Ryan looked confused, then the penny dropped. "Oh, that's creepy."

"A dead body's a dead body," Kate said. "They're not about to get up and walk." But despite her conviction she still felt a slight chill run down her spine, and her skin lifted into goosebumps.

"I don't know," Montgomery said. "I remember a case a few years back, there was this DB lying on the pathologist's table, and just as the knife went in for the first incision, the guy wakes up and screams."

"He woke up?" Her goosebumps now resembled goose-hills.

"Yelling blue murder. Turns out he'd been to an illegal Japanese restaurant and ate blowfish. The poison had put him into a coma and nobody noticed he wasn't dead."

"Did he survive?" Esposito wanted to know.

"I think so. But I bet he never went near Japanese food ever again."

"At least that's something that can be verified," Kate said, rotating her shoulders, telling herself it was from sitting in the same position for a long time, and not the feeling of someone walking over her grave. "Not like the rest of it."

"Hey, my gran was Irish, and she had the second sight," Ryan said. "She used to talk to the dead all the time."

"Yeah, but you told me they locked her up," Esposito pointed out.

"It didn't stop her seeing dead people."

Rick chuckled, tucking that little bit of information away for future use. "Okay, then how about this one? A mixture of the spiritual and the mundane. George Frederick Cooke, an actor who died in 1811 or so, donated his head to science in order to pay his medical bills. His headless ghost has been seen walking the burial ground at St Paul's chapel a number of times."

"Castle –" Kate began but he waved her to silence.

"But the kicker is this. His skull was used in productions of Hamlet for years after."

"That's …" Ryan began.

"Creepy," Esposito finished.

"And we're back to theatres," Montgomery said, pushing his chair away from the table and standing up. "And it's time for me to head on home."

"Yeah, me too." Ryan stretched. "Been a long day."

"I just need to use the little girl's room," Kate said, getting to her feet.

"You know where it is." Rick said, adding as she hurried out, "If you need anything, just yell." He looked at the others. "You're all coming tomorrow?" He glanced at his watch. "Today, actually. To the party?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Ryan said. "Already got my costume ready and waiting."

"As long as it's not that sequinned ball gown you talked about." Esposito shuddered. "Even the mental image …"

"Hey, I've got the legs for it."

"I don't need to know that."

"Just because you're jealous."

Montgomery laughed, herding his detectives out of the loft, bickering easily amongst themselves as they headed down the corridor.

When Kate came back a few minutes later, only Rick was still in the room, clearing the glasses and bottles from the poker table. "Here," she said, "let me give you a hand."

"No, that's fine." He smiled and carried the detritus into the kitchen area. "I was only waiting for you, then I'm heading to bed."

"I thought you'd be going out, partying into the wee small hours."

"These _are_ the wee small hours, if you hadn't noticed." He chuckled. "Besides, I'm not as young as I used to be."

"I doubt all those girls you've been photographed with mind." She picked up her purse.

He turned to her, his hand on his chest. "You wound me, Detective Beckett. You know my heart belongs to you."

"It's the rest of you I think I need to worry about."

"Try me."

"No, thanks." She checked her pockets for her keys. "So where did you get all those stories?" she asked, glancing at him.

"Everything is grist to a writer's mill. You never know when you might need a bit of useless information. So I read. Do research. Google. You never know what you might find if you've never googled."

"You know I could arrest you if you did that in public, don't you?" Kate teased.

His lips pursed and his eyebrows raised towards his hairline. "Ooh, handcuffs."

"So … were they true?"

"True?" Rick laughed. "You're asking me for proof?"

"No, just … what you thought."

He moved closer. "What I think is that … life would be a lot more boring without the possibility."

"So you don't really believe in ghouls and ghosts."

"Things that go bump in the night …" He smiled. "Although that's usually my mother coming back from one of her trysts."

"Is everything always a joke to you?"

"I can see the funny side."

"And have you ever actually seen a ghost?"

He leaned back against the counter. "Once. I think. I was doing research in this bar, and I swear I saw a confederate soldier walk through the wall."

"A bar."

"And I wasn't drunk. Stone cold sober. At least at that point, although maybe after ..." His blue eyes twinkled at her. "But of course you never have. The sceptic, not believing in anything she can't see, hear or feel."

Kate glanced down, then back up, defiance on her face. "Central Park. I'd just made detective and got called out to a body on Summit Rock. I thought I saw …" She stopped.

"No. Come on, you have to tell now." He had stepped closer, until there was only a few inches between them. "'Fess up."

Her chin lifted. "A Native American. Feathers and everything. Just standing there, looking at me. And then he was gone."

Rick smiled, lifting a hand to run it down the line of her jaw. "See? Was that so hard?"

"What are you doing?" she asked, but didn't step back.

"Something I've wanted to do for a long time. Maybe it's the time of year. Perhaps I've been possessed by one of the spirits. Or maybe I just want to …" He dropped his head, his lips brushing across hers.

"Castle …"

"You want me to stop?"

"I … don't know."

He cupped the back of her neck. "Just say the word. Otherwise …"

"I …"

He was placing small kisses on the side of her neck, down to where her shoulder created a delightful little hollow. "What?"

"Where …" She swallowed, her throat moving sexily. "Where's Alexis again?"

"With Paige. Sleepover. And my mother's out. It's just you, me and the ghosts." He licked her skin. "So? What's the answer?"

In response she put her hands either side of his head, angling it just right, and kissed him. Not a peck or a thank you or anything else … this was a kiss, her tongue fencing with his.

He walked her backwards towards the couch, using his strength to lay her down on the leather without jarring, without losing the delicious contact all along his body.

"Castle …" she murmured into his mouth.

"Kate. Oh, my sweet Kate …"

She was trembling in his arms, and he was about to tell her not to worry, that he'd be gentle, when he realised it was him trembling, not her. It had been a long time since he'd reacted like that to someone, and … no. Not trembling. Shaking. _Being_ shaken. Quite violently. He looked into Kate's hooded hazel eyes, but when she opened her mouth it wasn't her voice saying his name as he expected, instead …

"Richard."

He blinked hard. "Wha …?"

"Richard."

He struggled through the mist and opened his eyes, looking into the face of ... "Mother?"

She smiled. "I gather it was a good dream?"

"I …" He glanced down, then next to him. He was alone on the sofa, and the smile he found on his lips was almost sad. "Yes. Yes, it was." He mentally shook himself, feeling it drifting away a little. "Did you have a nice time?"

"Yes, thank you." She peeled off her gloves. "Blake was … very attentive."

"Do I hear the sound of wedding bells? I don't mind paying, you know that."

She glared at him. "Don't even joke about that." She plopped down into the armchair opposite. "Fun I can handle. Anything more than that and you know what they say."

"Buyer beware?"

She threw a cushion at him. "Once bitten, twice shy."

"I thought you were the one doing the biting."

Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, for the time you were small enough to put over my knee."

"And you never did, you know that, mother."

"Spare the rod, spoil the child."

"How many of these little aphorisms are you planning on coming out with tonight? Just so I know so I can fall asleep again."

She waved his joke away. "Where are the others?"

He looked across to the poker table, the empty chairs, the abandoned chips, then at his watch. It was gone 2.00 am. "They went a while back, and I must have dozed off," he said, sitting up and rubbing his hands across his face, feeling the sharp prickles of his beard starting to push through his cheeks. "It's been a long week. Besides, they need their sleep for tomorrow. The party of the year."

"So do you."

"So you woke me up to tell me to go to bed?"

She laughed lightly. "Must have." She stood up and held out her hand. "Come on. We have to decorate tomorrow, get everything ready."

He let her assist him to his feet. "Since when do you help? Apart from with the booze, of course."

She slapped him lightly on the arm. "I could forget you're a grown man, you know."

He laughed. "Anyway, tomorrow?" He stretched, and groaned. "It's already Hallowe'en."

"Then I need my beauty sleep."

"No, you don't."

She smiled. "My son, who just once in a while gets it right."

"Has to happen occasionally."

She laughed quietly, slipping her arm around his waist. "Come on, kiddo. My pillow is calling."

"Okay."

They walked slowly across the apartment, and it was only as they were starting up the stairs, side by side, that Rick glanced back towards the couch, at the dream already fragmenting in his mind. Still, maybe it wasn't a dream, but a premonition. A ghost from the future. He smiled.

"What was that for?" Martha asked. "That lecherous grin?"

"Nothing."

"Thinking about Kate Beckett?"

"No."

"Liar."

"I was just considering what we have to do to get the place ready for the party. Alexis will be home in the morning, the cobweb machine arrives at 9 –"

"As if we didn't have enough."

"You want to find somewhere else to live?"

"Maybe there's a corner or two could do with some more …"

They disappeared, and a moment later the lights turned out, leaving only a faint glow through the windows from the city that never sleeps. And if the shade of possibilities still hung in the apartment for a few minutes, well, maybe it was the right time of year for it.


End file.
